


Katana

by SLWalker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (or at least getting to be at this point), Alternate Universe, Gen, Happy Pirate Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 23:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11218140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: Hondo had not intended to end up with two children aboard, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon them.  Kilindi, the Nautolan girl, had lost the only family and home she had.  Maul–Well, he really was a tiny little terror, but Hondo had no intentions of letting the boy disappear back into whatever world required him to call someone master.





	Katana

“You,” Hondo said, in a tone much closer to admiration than censure, “are the galaxy’s tiniest terror.”  He gestured in illustration, holding his hand at the correct approximate height, crouching with his coat pooling around him.

Maul just bared his teeth, pressed back against the wall as far from them as he could get.  He had done a truly spectacular job giving them the run-around, until he was finally cornered in a cargo hold still clutching a bundle of wires that he had torn out of a door circuit.

“I say we let the little biter go,” Shan muttered, probably still cradling the hand that had met with the zabrak boy’s surprisingly sharp canines.  No one expected the boy to actually be able to bite hard enough to make it through tough weequay skin, but there you had it. “See how long he lasts on his own.”

“We will do no such thing.”  Hondo raised his hand and waved dismissively. “Go, while you still have some dignity left.”

Shan did go, though not without some more undertone mumbling.  No matter.  Hondo had not intended to end up with two children aboard, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon them.  Kilindi, the Nautolan girl, had lost the only family and home she had.  Maul–

Well, he really was a tiny little terror, but Hondo had no intentions of letting the boy disappear back into whatever world required him to call someone  _master_.

“All right.  I see that we have reached an impasse,” Hondo said, reasonably. “I can’t let you take any of my ships, though.  I need those to make a living,  _raquor'dan'a_.  Is there something else you might want?  I’m always open to negotiations.”

Given the answer – continued bared teeth – it was becoming quite clear to Hondo that he might have gotten himself in over his head.  Negotiating with Hutts?  Easy.  This, though?

Ah well.

He stood and opened the door and sent for Kilindi.  If anyone could get Maul out of there in some non-hostile manner, Hondo already knew it was her.

 

 

 

Twelve escape attempts later – two of which were surprisingly explosive, but thankfully not lethal to anything but a bulkhead or two – Hondo was not quite at wit’s end, but he was not so far from it that he couldn’t measure the distance.  He had to rely on his crew to do the raiding of late, because he was otherwise occupied with his charges.

Kilindi was quiet, heartsore and sad.  She blamed Hondo at first, for what happened to the Academy, but after he allowed her to view the footage and explained his original intentions, she had instead turned inward.  The turning point with her had been after yet another night chasing Maul around the ship until the boy was finally worn out, then letting Kilindi half-coax, half-drag him back to the room they currently shared.

“I have seen runaway slaves less tenacious,” Hondo said, the next day. “I have  _been_  a runaway slave less tenacious.”

Kilindi blinked her large, black eyes up at him. “You were a slave?”

“Long ago,” Hondo had said, shrugging expansively.

She looked down again, there. “Me too.  Not so long ago.”

Ah.  He looked over at her for a long moment and felt the distance between him and his wit’s end lengthen considerably.

 

 

 

Usually, the only time Maul ever spoke to Hondo – or anyone  _but_  Kilindi – was to issue a threat.  Once or twice, when he was recaptured from yet another escape attempt, he would snarl something that sounded desperate about waiting for some sort of test to end.  Otherwise, though, he remained a bristly little menace with sharp teeth and surprising agility and quick fists.

The first crack in his hostility was when Hondo managed to find out just  _what_  subspecies of zabrak the boy was – because he most clearly was not of Iridonian extraction – and learned what he could of the Nightbrothers of Dathomir.  

Hybrids.  Born slaves.

“You might have brothers,” he explained, once he had given Maul the (very intentionally not powerful or networked to anything) datapad with the information on it.  "Dathomir is unfriendly to visitors, but perhaps when you’re older, you might find them.“

The look he got back was wide-eyed surprise and – of course – wariness, but it was at least one recognizable as belonging to a child.

It was the kit, though, that was the big turning point, a few weeks later.

"What is it?” the boy asked suspiciously, as the little felinx kit toddled over to him and rubbed against his leg.

Hondo was sitting crosslegged in front of the door, having nudged the little black-and-tan creature into heading that direction. “A felinx kit.  Alas, the only survivor of her litter; the captain apparently killed the mother and the rest jettisoning his cargo in an attempt to deprive us.”  Hondo shrugged. “He failed, of course, but his pets unfortunately paid the price.”

“Why is it– why is she making that noise?” Maul demanded, staring at the felinx intently as she made to crawl onto him, tiny claws catching in his clothes.

“It means she likes you.”

“Why?”

Hondo shrugged again. “Why not?”

That just seemed to confuse Maul, but after a moment he tentatively touched the felinx’s back and then whipped his hand away when the felinx tried to rub against it.  But then after a longer moment, hopefully realizing that the small cat meant no harm, he tried again and this time, he blinked and let her run under his hand, tail sliding between his fingers.  "Oh.“

Hondo hid his grin when he slipped back out of the room, leaving the boy to figure out that the kit was his newest friend.

"Feeling sentimental, boss?” one of his men asked, when he retold the story later over drinks, bemused by the amount of effort Hondo was going to for two children he had once intended to ransom.

“What is life,” Hondo answered, philosophically, “but a series of sentimental moments?”

 

 

 

Hondo acquired toys for the felinx.  Maul guarded his new pet quite zealously from everyone but Kilindi, who made sure she wrapped her head-tresses up so they would not become toys in their own right until the kit could be trained out of seeing them as such.  Anytime Hondo came around, Maul tried to hide the kit wherever she wouldn’t be seen, though only to partial success.

“He thinks you’re going to take her and kill her,” Kilindi explained, which managed to make Hondo feel vaguely ill.

No small feat, given his life.

“Does she have a name?” he asked, resolving to steal one of those ridiculous climbing contraptions that people often bought for any number of cat species next.

Kilindi grinned, a much lighter look than she had worn when she first came aboard. “Katana.”

“Katana?”

“A type of sword.”

“Oh,” Hondo said, then grinned.

 

 

 

The escape attempts came to an end, albeit slowly, but not before Maul tried to escape  _with_ his felinx.

It was also much easier to coax him to go back to his room than it used to be after.

Hondo actually  _paid_  for the fake tree with three platforms, a hammock and a dangling stuffed rodus, and started making plans for some type of onboard body of water when Kilindi was kind enough to put it together for him.

 

 

 

The first time Hondo realized that the boy was Force sensitive – he knew the Nightbrothers supposedly naturally were, but Maul had never overtly displayed as such – was when he was flung across the room by what felt like a blast wave, absent the heat.

It was the keening that had brought him running.

The not-as-tiny terror who had left teeth marks on several of Hondo’s crew, who had wrecked many doors, a few bulkheads and even almost managed to steal a shuttle a few times was clinging to his now-grown felinx – who was distressed by this, but wasn’t clawing over it, what a good pet – and sobbing so hard he was barely able to catch a breath.

It took Kilindi a good twenty minutes to calm Maul down enough that Hondo wasn’t going to be thrown around like a cheap sack of wobol flour, and when he finally  _could_  approach, it was to a devastated litany of  _he’ll kill her, he’ll kill her,_  but somehow this time, Hondo knew that he wasn’t the subject.

“Ah,  _raquor'dan'a_ ,” Hondo said, and both the children looked up at him, huddled with a felinx with tear-wet fur, “he would have to come through me, first.”


End file.
